Film review: Our Hospitality (1923)

This film is 98 years old but utterly wonderful.  In general, Buster Keaton stands bestride the world of cinema like a colossus.  This was his first "real" full-length (75 minutes) film after Three Ages, which is really three shorts stitched together, and although it makes for a more cohesive whole than that, it does rather fall into sections.  It begins with a bit of melodrama (that features a baby Buster Keaton Jr. playing the baby that will grow into the character played by his father in the rest of the film) wherein a feud between the "Canfields and the McKays" is explained, and a crazy uncle of the Canfield clan comes stalking the McKay father and both are killed, prompting the brother of the crazy uncle (who previously had been attempting to maintain the peace) to vow that the feud would continue to the next generation.  Meanwhile, the McKay wife wants to save Buster Jr. from this fate and sends him off to New York to be raised by his aunt, in blissful ignorance.  She dies shortly thereafter, and it is only when Buster, whom we see driving along on a (historically accurate - apparently he was a stickler) comical early pedal-less bicycle prototype 

in the bucolic setting which would later become Manhattan as we know it, gets a letter telling him his last relative has died and he has inherited the McKay estate (in Arkansas?  If they said where it was, I missed it).  We see him imagine a palatial mansion, and he is instantly enthusiastic about claiming his inheritance.  Only then does his loving aunt reveal to him the history of the feud.  Nonetheless, he is determined to set out (despite his aunt's dire warnings of there being Indians "out West - past Trenton"), and gets into what looks like a regular stagecoach, only it is one car of a three-car train being towed by a perfect recreation of Stephenson's Rocket  

(again, Buster the stickler for accuracy - although in this case he cheated, as it never left England, but he thought it funnier than the American equivalent of the pre-Civil War setting of this film).  Just as he gets on board, a pretty young lady (played by Buster's then wife, and mother of the baby) comes running up.  She wants to return home, having just been visiting New York.  

Thus begins a sort of self-contained mini film full of gags about the ridiculous little train traveling slowly (Buster's dog trots behind it the whole way) over tracks laid loosely over various detritus, and easily moved to go round things if necessary.  There are various gags, 

such as a hobo-looking onlooker who throws what looks like potatoes at the person stoking the boiler so that he retaliates with logs, which the hobo then happily collects.  Of course, in the course of the journey, Buster falls for the young woman and she for him, and equally predictably, it turns out that she is a Canfield, as the elder Canfield, her father, and her two giant brothers are waiting to pick her up in town when the train (back to front, because, shenanigans) finally arrives in their small town.  One of the large Canfield sons quickly works out who Buster is and quickly sets out trying to acquire a gun to off him, while remaining outwardly polite to the oblivious Buster, who is just trying to find that palatial estate he imagined.  He gets separated from the murderous Canfield but passes by their (actually palatial) estate on the way to his and bumps into his beloved, who invites him to dinner (she is still unaware of who he is).  On he walks and of course discovers that he only owns a tumbledown shack.  This segues rather quickly into him going fishing (presumably for lunch) and getting caught under a new waterfall (which will feature again later) created when some people up river blow up a dam.  THEN we move on to Buster arriving for dinner, and the father of the house preventing his sons from just shooting Buster there and then because of the rule of hospitality (hence the title) which forbids murdering one's rival, but only so long as he's a guest in one's house.  Buster finally cottons on by overhearing the large sons talking and realizes his predicament.  He makes occasional dashes outside but is quickly convinced that he'll never make it.  But then, when another dinner guest, a kindly parson, is persuaded to stay the night to avoid a rainstorm, he resolves to stay in the house as long as possible and nips upstairs too.  Eventually, of course, he has to make a break for it, and we get the final section of the film, which is him being chased by the male Canfields, as the female Canfield traipses after them wailing at them to stop.  This leads to what is probably the most famous sequence in the film, which is when both Buster and the girl are swept 

towards the falls seen previously and he has to swing out and catch her as she goes over.  

It's a truly ridiculous stunt, so of course, he actually performed it, and in the course of doing so swallowed so much water he had to have his stomach pumped.  Anyway, it's a classic - up there with The General and The Navigator, if you ask me.  And the version we own is a truly pristine restoration with a great new original score.